Inkjet printing systems and radiation-curable gel inks are known in the art. However, while known gel ink compositions are used successfully, a need remains for improved gel ink compositions capable of being used to develop higher quality images.
Gel ink colors typically include, for example, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. However, gel ink compositions of lighter colors may also be desirable. Light-colored inks, in combination with the typical inks, may enable higher quality images while suppressing image quality defects such as graininess and mottle over the tone range from the low density area to the high density area.
However, obtaining effective light-colored inks is not as trivial as simply preparing an ink composition with a reduced colorant load of the conventional colorant. This is because there are significant hue differences between, for example, a low-colorant-loaded cyan ink and the full-colorant-loaded cyan ink.
As a result, there exists a need to develop radiation-curable gel inks to achieve higher quality images.